untitled (clover) 2008
Just west of the East River shore in Brooklyn Bridge Park a large lawn supporting several huge patches of clover was dotted with raindrops this past Sunday.
Category: NYC
a guide to “Democracy in America”*
a clutch of some of the pink and yellow [g a y] balloons which accompany Sharon Hayes’s “Revolutionary Love 1 & 2: I Am Your Worst Fear, I Am Your Best Fantasy”, spotted hanging out at the bottom of a dark corner of the hall just outside the room where the sound and video piece is installed
I didn’t have time to do a full post on the show tonight, so I decided that I’d put up just one image and make a very strong recommendation that everyone who can do so make her or his way to the Park Avenue Armory tomorrow (actually that’s today, Saturday) for the last day of Creative Time’s essential contribution to the moment we’re all sharing right now, questioning the idea of “Democracy in America“.
It’s an awesome show, it’s not going to be forgotten, and you know you’re going to want to have been a part of it – especially after the news that an important and not unrelated show at the Chelsea Museum has been [summarily ?] pulled.
*
This headline is the title of the exhibition catalog, edited by its curator, Nato Thompson.
Brooklyn Edison Company
untitled (B E CO) 2008
surf’s up in Bushwick?
A surfer colony in Bushwick? Who knew? Yesterday afternoon these surfer dudes were busy loading a number of boards into and onto this beach buggy on Bogart across from Grattan.
blindness in Williamsburg
untitled (Blindness) 2008
I just found this a few minutes ago while looking at my gatherings for my day in Bushwick and Williamsburg. I probably shouldn’t admit it, since I like the image so much, but it was just one of those captures I manage to dredge up while carrying my feather-triggered camera around dropped more or less at arms length. The wall is on Metropolitan Avenue just east of the BQE.
modernist building abandoned on Metropolitan pavement
Earlier this evening I spotted this canvas leaning against a light pole on Metropolitan Avenue near the BQE overpass. It’s a painting of a modernist steel and glass building, and it’s been carefully pressed into the shape of the architectural image it outlines.
I like it as sculpture, especially with that broken lower stretcher rail which added a bend to the right of the center. Maybe it’s still there.
Times Square ghosts
untitled (yellow slickers) 2008
Early last Saturday we met up with a visiting friend who had never been to New York before, so of course we didn’t let the rain keep us inside. We ended up walking all over Manhattan. In the midst of the worst of it I found this handsome family of ghosts sheltering, like the three of us, under a marquee on Broadway in Times Square.
Calatrava’s transit hub: another bait and switch job
just put in a parking lot
Remember that glorious central transit hub we were promised? The one they’ve been dangling in front of all of our eyes for years? Gone. It’s been cancelled. It looks like one more case of bait-and-switch. Some people are making a lot of money playing with us, while they play with this wretched site.
On September 10th, the day before this, our latest jingoist holiday, “Patriot Day”*, Mayor Bloomberg decided to drop his own bomb on New York. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, “There Should Be No More Excuses At Ground Zero”, he wrote:
. . . the PATH station’s design, including the underground hall, is too complicated to build and threatens to delay the memorial and the entire project. It must be scaled back.
The scale of the grand, highly-praised and long-anticipated transit superstation designed by Santiago Calatrava for the World Trade Center site had already been cut back several times, and our Mayor wants it reduced even further – actually, totally eliminated at least as we’ve known it until now.
One would think that our much-vaunted “subway mayor,” who worked so hard (with mixed results) to make several totally inappropriate new corporate-sports stadiums and arenas his personal civic career memorial, might be able to persuade himself that a great transit hub would be the perfect grand projet to leave to a great city on the run. But no, he just wants to fill in that damn hole.
*
originally called “National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims Of the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001” and never to be confused with that much more venerable and more upbeat celebration called “Patriots’ Day”
[image from answers.com]
NURTUREart benefit – save the date – October 27
I know it’s almost two months away, but if your calendar fills up like my calendar does, and if you already know how worthy this operation is, you’ll appreciate knowing now that the 2008 NURTUREart benefit is scheduled for October 27th. It’s also an terrific opportunity to bring home some terrific art, so put it in your calendars: As Barry says on Bloggy, “You know any group that honored James and me at the last one has excellent taste”.
Oh, and the bash will be in Manhattan, at James Cohan Gallery on West 26th Street. More details as we get closer to the date.
David Byrne bike racks only temporary
hanging out with the man in Chelsea, but only for a bit
We still don’t have our Second Avenue subway or public toilets, despite promises going back decades, or almost a century in the case of the subway, but it didn’t take long to see the colorful and varied site-specific shapes of David Byrne’s bike racks pop up around the city. Hooray for David – and for all bikes and bikers! Now, if we hope to save the streets for people, we just have to figure out how to secure these wonderful machines from thieves.
I saw this particular grouping last Friday on West 25th Street, in the midst of the Chelsea gallery neighborhood. I like the friendly or family mix of cute bikes.
Wait, wait! I wrote those two paragraphs before I had looked for a link to use with this post and only just now did I see in the NYTimes story that the racks will only be installed for 364 days. That’s bunk!
The nine racks will be removed about 11 months from now; they were made of durable materials but are intended as temporary public art, not a permanent installation. (A temporary art project cannot remain on public land indefinitely without approval by the city’s Public Design Commission.) Mr. Byrne arranged to have the racks fabricated and hopes to have the chance to sell them, eventually, as works of art.
Once again it seems that in New York money “trumps” (choice of word is deliberate) both art and the public good.